grand theft verbal

a poem by ee cummings 

---

i like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your
body.  it is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.  i like what it does,
i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

intoxicated

huge props to marian at runaway sentence. for giving me an a-freakin-mazing indieink challenge this week. sidebar, is this really my fifth week in the challenge? whew, time flies.

so marian gave me a great prompt this week, which you'll find at the end of the post. i don't know if she went snooping around on here and found out about my love for david sedaris or for using quotes as inspiration, but i got one helluva prompt out of her. i thought about revisiting dave and lex again with this post, but decided to go with something more personal. 

andrea answered my challenge this week, so be sure to stop by over there and give her post a read!


---


silence.

silence.  

the thing about silence is that it's never quiet.  the entire concept is a paradox.

i have never heard anything as clearly as i've heard his silence.

it rings in my ears, makes them hurt, i contemplate pulling a van gogh.

his silence pushes through all the words in the world.  all the words i've dropped on the floor at his feet are swept under the ugly red and beige rug stolen from the sidewalk down the block.

his silence stomps on the words i've said with a pain in my chest and fills the room like a dark and heavy cloud.  i'd rather have the thunder than the silence.  say something.  say something.  say anything.  say something. 

the last thing before the silence was a dagger.  no, not one dagger, that's not true at all.  a million daggers, sharpened and aimed precisely at my heart.  vile daggers dripping with venom that stained my clothes and poisoned the air, my insides.  the daggers could only be outdone with silence.  i'd rather have the daggers than the silence.

one thousand six hundred eighty seconds of silence have passed.  the air is toxic and it's getting hard to breathe as his silence weaves its fingers through my hair, over my face, around my neck and they tighten tighten tighten.

i will not be the one to break the silence.

he will.  with another venomous dagger he'll ask me to stay.  stay.

i'd rather have the silence than be asked to forgive you.

in a muted and quick motion, i slip off my clothes and slide under the covers where he and his silence wait.  i press my warmth to his and i cry.  his smirk appears when my eyes adjust to the darkness he just forced over the room and when i see that devilish smile, the one that knows he's won and will always win, the one that pretends to love me, i smile too.

you know i will always stay.


---

prompt: "Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute." David Sedaris, from When You Are Engulfed In Flames

---


update friday, april 29
this post was featured on five star friday! thank you to schmutzie for the honor,
and to whoever it was out there who submitted "intoxicated" this week!

don't you forget about me

this is the last week of classes for the semester, which means (for me) a final this week and then a week full of writing writing writing - not much of that's gonna show up here though. papers are due by the dozen (not really, but it feels like it) so i'm stuck channeling most of my words onto those pages instead of over here. don't forget about me though - i'll still be posting for the indieink writing challenge so you can definitely expect to see something here once a week - but that's probably it. if you miss me, though, you can always track me down on twitter where i've always got something to say.

just bear with me for a bit and wish me luck.

a XO

lucky

it's that time! i'm in the indieink challenge again for the fourth time this week, and my prompt was a doozy.  head ant had me stumped for days, so i hope i did the challenge some justice!  you can find the prompt at the end of the post.

also this week, i challenged dafeenah, who answered my prompt hilariously! be sure to check it out.

i played around with fiction again this week, and decided to revisit dave and lex.  this was a toughie for me and the result is experimental, so please feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think!


---


for my beloved,

i will never know all the words to say.  can i even say i'm sorry? somehow i feel that will never be enough. but i am.  can i say that if i could go back, i wouldn't have done it? that's the truth, but somehow i feel you will never believe it.  i need you.  i miss you.  i do not exist without you.  forgive me, my love.  come back to me. 

forever,
brian 

lex paced back and forth in front of the dozen roses.  she had placed them in her grandmother's antique crystal vase and set the flowers on the coffee table of her and dave's apartment.  they weren't meant for her; she didn't know who they were sent to.  all she knew was that brian had emptied his heart onto the card and his beloved, whoever she may be, threw it away.  what had happened, she wondered, what had he done?

lex thought back over the afternoon as she read and reread brian's message.  an hour before, she had torn the apartment apart looking for her baby blanket, the one piece of her childhood she had never been able to let go of.  the homemade yellow and light pink blanket had been used to death; it was nearly threadbare, but it was so special to lex that she couldn't bring herself to get rid of it.  it had a home draped over the arm chair in the living room and just being able to touch the soft fabric made lex feel safe and close to her parents again.

but the blanket wasn't in the apartment this afternoon, and lex flew into a frenzy trying to find it.  when their home was ransacked and she was sure she had sifted through everything they owned, lex journeyed to the dumpster outside their building, thinking it may have wound up there by accident. to her simultaneous horror and delight, she found the blanket in a garbage bag full of dave's crap.

i'm going to kill him i'm going to kill him i'm going to kill him i'm going to kill him! she thought to herself when she found her childhood companion. why doesn't dave think? doesn't he know how important this blanket is to me? of course he does, he was just being a careless asshole once again. i'm going to kill him!

suddenly, lex had her mental tirade interrupted by the sight of a healthy, beautiful bouquet of red roses tossed haphazardly into the dumpster.

who would throw that out? she wondered, and picked up the roses.  when she found the card, she nearly cried. okay, now i'm crying over people i don't even know. i have issues.

she read the card again.

well, i guess brian fucked up. 

lex took the roses with her when she returned to her apartment on the third floor.  she just couldn't stand the thought of such a romantic and heartfelt gesture winding up in the trash, to die unappreciated.  besides, she loved roses and had made such a mess of the apartment while searching for her baby blanket this afternoon, she figured it could use a touch of beauty.

pacing across the living room, clutching the card, lex thought about dave.

dave. dave. dave. dave.

that moment, as if she had summoned her boyfriend with only her mind, she heard his keys in the door.  dave was home.  lex stuffed the card into her pocket - there was no reason to tell dave about her afternoon.  the blanket was on it's second trip through the washing machine and the apartment was back in order - for the most part.  she glanced at the roses in her grandmother's vase on the coffee table in the apartment she shared with dave.

he came in the door with a smile on his face and tossed his keys onto the small table lex kept next to the door for just that purpose.  he was carrying a bouquet of red roses.

lex walked toward him, threw her arms around him, and kissed him as if he'd just returned from war.

"i love you," dave said. "you know that, right?"

"yes," lex answered. i do not exist without you, she thought.


---

prompt: you are a dumpster diver. you find a bouquet of flowers with an attached message.
what does it say? what do you do?

faking it

i'm basically in hell right now. the end of the semester is just a few short weeks away and i'm overwhelmed with schoolwork, so my writing has had to be put on the back burner. to hold you over until thursday when my challenge post will be up, here's an essay i wrote about a month back. i gave y'all a sneak peek when i was working on it, so here's the full thing in all its dirty, brazilian glory.


---

Mind, Soul, or Body - There's a Choice

The human body is often sensationalized in literature and in life.  Some cultures revere the body as a sacred temple and its purity as a commitment to God.  Still others treat the body like a playground, the site of boundless tomfoolery, and others view the body as a canvass for individualism and creative expression.  In his novel Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado represents the body in many different ways.  Bodies are shown in this text as vessels, as separate from the mind and soul, and even as mirrors into the bearer’s innermost passions and desires.

One of the first descriptive images given in the novel is the portrait of Vadinho on the day of his death.  In the tradition of Carnival, Vadinho is dressed up in drag couture, celebrating the momentous holiday in a spasms of laughter and dance.  Up until the moment of his death, Vadinho was dancing and carousing in the square, though inside, his body was preparing to shut down and give up.  Vadinho’s outward appearance never betrayed the weaknesses of his body, instead partnering with Vadinho’s mind and representing his jubilance rather than the anguish of his failing organs and bodily systems.  In this instance, Amado is demonstrating the body’s capability of repressing pain or physical anguish and employing a “mind over matter” state wherein the outward expression of the body is a direct response to the mind’s desires.  When, in instances like this, where Vadinho is “dressed up like a Bahian woman…dancing the samba, with the greatest enthusiasm” (3), the body is a mirror into the spirit and the joys of the mind.  Without speaking, and using only movement and makeup, Vadinho is showing the entire square his excitement and great pleasure in the moment by swinging his hips and shaking his shoulders.  The state of mind, pure happiness and sheer excitement in this case, is expressed through the actions of the body.

Another place in the novel where we see this exuberant expression of bodies is when Dona Flor recalls a night of partying and dancing with Vadinho at the house of a friend.  Surrounded by party guests, Vadinho and Flor are alone in their world, in love and in lust, and they let their bodies demonstrate this even in the company of neighbors and strangers.  On the dance floor are other members of the crowd, striving to keep up with the dancing of the passionate pair.  “They knew the steps, but they were too restrained to compete with Dona Flor and Vadinho” (207).  Amado creates an image of the couple letting their bodies do the talking, all the expressing necessary for Vadinho and his wife.  Giving up on inhibitions and codes of social conduct, they restlessly fling their bodies about the dance floor in homage of their powerful feelings for one another.  Again, the bodies express the innermost desires that may not be spoken aloud but cannot be suppressed.

Dona Flor also alters her body’s outward appearance as a means of expressing her inner turmoil and pain over losing Vadinho.  Following the “rules” of widowhood and appropriate behavior of a woman in mourning, she dresses her body to demonstrate her state of mind.  “Whether in the street or at home, she had worn black high-necked dresses” (223).  This conservative black wardrobe conceals the majority of the surface of her body, hiding her skin and vulnerability under a veil of dramatic self-confinement.  To expose herself, especially parts of her body reserved for the intimate touches of her late husband, to her neighbors and friends would indicate a degree of openness and willingness to open further.  But Dona Flor keeps herself covered, hiding not only her skin but the raw wounds of her heartache, staving off conversation that would further her pain.  The fact that she remained in these widow’s clothes even when alone in her home is another indication of her dressing her body to suit her mind.  Flor likely feels that even the smallest deviation from her widow’s attire would be a suggestion in opposition of her suffering and sadness.  Obsessed with keeping the appropriate appearance, both as a wife and a widow, Flor does not allow her body to be exposed even in her private quarters, because allowing her intimate areas to break from the cover of her black wardrobe may erroneously imply that she is not properly depicting the widow’s turmoil that she so miserably suffers. 

Elsewhere in the novel, the body and the mind are not as much in touch.  In these instances, Amado displays the intensity of the body’s natural, carnal cravings and how these desires often stand at odds with logic and the mind’s capacity to differentiate between what the brain knows is best and what the body yearns for.  The disconnect between the conscience and the body often comes at times of acute desire, when the body is overtaken by a certain thirst, though the mind, speaking logically and without feeling, tries to silence these urges and encourage the bearer of this battling body and mind to suppress them as well.  Dona Flor experiences this in her cravings for Vadinho before their marriage when he taunts and tempts her, daring her to break her virginal vow and make love to him.  Though at first able to resist his charms because of the logical arguments in her mind, Dona Flor becomes consumed with desire “in a blaze of towering flames….Feeling every day…less mistress of her will, her resistance weakening” (99).  Intellectually, Dona Flor recognizes the flaws in Vandinho and is in fact disgusted by his persistence without appropriate courtship.  But her body’s desires become far stronger than her concern for right and wrong, and she succumbs to him, allowing her body to win the battle.  When the body and the mind face a disagreement in wishes, the body often wins out.  Amado often points out how the body has the ultimate say, and that the cravings of physical intimacy and intensity are much harder to fight than a nagging (though right) conscience.  When the cravings of the frenzied, desirous body disconnect from the preferences of the logical mind, it is the body that holds the ultimate word, that cannot be silenced, and that spearheads the mission to satisfy those cravings.

The relationship between food and sex is Amado’s most frequently used vehicle to demonstrate the impulses of the human body.  Food takes on a humanistic quality for Dona Flor, and she relays her thoughts and feelings into her cooking, from the choice of food to prepare to how a meal should be eaten: delicately, or ferociously.  In addition to this, she offers the body itself as a meal, as she metaphorically describes how she has been made to feel and also as she desires to be consumed.  Following the death of Vadinho, on a friend’s request for a recipe, Dona Flor interjects this passage into her written response: “serve him up a young and pretty widow, cooked in her own tears of suffering and loneliness, in the sauce of her modesty and mourning, in the moans of her deprivation, in the fire of her forbidden desire, which gives her the flavor of guilt and sin” (221).  As a mode of expressing her turmoil, Dona Flor offers her body as a sacrifice.  She is racked with guilt for craving sexual contact while battling her tragic loss and emergence into widowhood.  Her battling desires are referenced again in this passage, as she tries to quiet her mind and act appropriately.  Afraid of not being a “good widow” and letting her sexual urges overwhelm her, she seeks to be fried up and served as a meal.  “One is tempted to equate eating with copulation, food with femal, and eater with male” (Chamberlain 69).  She seeks to be consumed, as well; as much as she wants Dona Nair Carvalho and her guests to enjoy this dish she suggests; she wants someone, Vadinho, to devour her with as much zeal as one would eat this carefully prepared meal.  Dona Flor admits her craving to replace what she lacks now due to Vadinho’s death, and slyly slips into her recipe’s introduction that she waits, “cooking over a slow fire every night, just ready to be served” (Amado 221).  “By substituting the female body or Flor herself for the dish in question” (Chamberlain 69), Amado makes it excruciatingly apparent precisely what Flor is missing most in the wake of Vadinho’s death. The slow fire sitting beneath her cookware is mirrored in her body itself, where the want is ignited and glowing, low and quiet, but very much alive and scalding.

As much as the novel seeks to connect and reconnect the body with the bearer’s mind, there are other times at which the physical representation of the body, the tangible collection of muscle, bone and flesh, is entirely detached from that which fills it and gives it movement and life.  Vadinho’s physical body is buried in the earth, fastened securely in a coffin, unable to move on its own.  This offers no obstruction for his soul, or his spirit, that walks into Dona Flor and Dr. Teodoro’s house and lays its hands on Dona Flor.  The spirit of Vadinho is capable of absolutely everything the body was while it was alive.  Dona Flor feels the very same touches and displays the very same marks of pressure and aggressive passion from the spirit that she did from the flesh of her late husband.  The small matter of Vadinho’s physical body laying beneath the ground is no complication for his spirit, as it seduces and pleasures Dona Flor and leaves her with the tangible evidence to prove it.  Dona Norma takes notice of his imprints and erroneously, though logically, assumes they were left on Dona Flor by her new husband, Teodoro.  Embarrassing Flor, she calls out, “all those marks on your neck, and you tell me nothing happened.  I didn’t know the doctor was the blood-sucking type” (472).  Flor’s body betrays her secret, that the spirit of her husband needs no physical body to love and charm her’s.  Vadinho’s body is unimportant when Dona Flor beckons him, for it was simply a vessel for his soul.  He exists outside of it, as much as he ever did while the body lived.  Amado uses Vadinho’s spiritual, if not physical, resurrection to point out the uselessness of the body.  Humans exist in soul, in spirit, even when they cannot exist for the senses anymore.  Bodies act only as tangible versions of the soul, and become inconsequential when they are exhausted from life on earth.  Amado suggests that people have the capacity to live even after their bodies can no longer take the pressures of the physical world and become useless to the spirit.

The human body can be seen as an expression of creativity, of religious beliefs, or even of political and humanistic feelings and affiliations.  What Jorge Amado suggests in Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is that the body can be used as a vehicle for even more acute expression.  The body can express the wants of the mind, presenting stoicism to echo a logical choice; it can take on an embodiment of physical desires, sexual cravings, and appetites of all kind.  Or the body can simply be a lifeless mound on its own, lacking any characteristics other than flesh color and blood type.  What gives the body purpose and life is not to be found in a medical doctors chart of vital signs, because heartbeat and blood pressure have no bearing on the soul that fills the body and allows it to live at all.

i will tell you a story

i've spent most of the day reading blogs belonging to friends and strangers, essays, and old sputterings of my own.

and i've realized that there's something i have to do. someday. i can't do it now; there's just no way. but i'm writing this, now, as a declaration, a promise to myself that i hope one of you will hold me to.

i have a story. it's a very long story. it's heartbreaking and hilarious. it's unbelievable and at the same time, parts of it make me the everywoman. it's a true story, a sad story, a happy story, a complicated story.

i'm not ready to write it yet, because i can't be sure it's over yet. what i am sure of, though, is that i couldn't bear to write it unfinished, because i couldn't bear to rewrite it when it finally ends. i have only the strength to write it once, this i know is true.

i will someday write this story. i will tell the whole story, beginning to end, wherever and whenever that end may be. but not yet.

i will tell you this story when its ink on my life is dry; i will put my insides on the page; i will tell you this story. i will tell you the whole truth.



someday, when the time is write right. when it's all over, and when there's nothing stopping me anymore.

listen...

#quoted 11 - clarice lispector

"The Hell I have gone through - how can I explain it to you? - has been the Hell that comes from love. Oh, people attach the idea of sin to sex. But how innocent and infantile a sin that is. The real Hell is the Hell of love. Love is the experiencing of a greater danger in sin - it is the experiencing of the dirt and degradation and the worst of happiness."

- clarice lispector, the passion according to g.h.

this shit is bananas

another week, another entry into the indie ink writing challenge. i was nervous and excited at the same time when i saw i was being challenged by sunshine this week. we know each other in real life, not just on the interwebs, so i knew she'd have a good prompt for me. keeping a promise i implored her to make, she gave me this challenge:

dialogue. write an argument between two lovers.

so i'm stretching my dialoguing muscles and this is what happened.

when you finish this, scoot yourself over to mean girl garage and see the response to my challenge.

---

"you're joking, right? you're not having three bananas right now!"

"why can't i have three bananas?"

"well first of all i guess you never want to shit again. bananas are binding, dave."

"uh... i mean, thanks for being so concerned about my colon health but why is this an issue?"

"because you can't eat three bananas! that's not a meal!"

"i'm not having a meal, i'm having a snack."

"three bananas is not a snack!"

"seriously lex? why aren't three bananas a snack?"

"because they just aren't! one banana is a snack, fine."

"but one isn't going to fill me up so i'm having three. i really don't see what the big deal is here."

"i go food shopping and get you all the shit you ask for and you eat three bananas for a snack? now i'm just going to have to go buy more so i can have my reasonable one banana a day for lunch. you're so fucking thoughtless sometimes dave!"

"what if i go buy another bunch of bananas tomorrow? will that shut you the fuck up?"

"that's not the point! i can buy more bananas too. but look in the damn cabinets, babe! i got you chips, crackers, granola bars - all normal snack foods that a normal person would eat. why would you eat three bananas as a snack?"

"because i wanted a fucking banana! holy shit, can you relax please?"

"don't tell me to relax!"

"i really think it's necessary right now, you're acting crazy over me eating a banana as a snack!"

"it's not about you having a banana as a snack, dave, it's about you eating three bananas as a snack when i bought you actual snack foods that don't take away part of my lunch every day!"

"i said i would buy you more tomorrow lex! what the hell is your problem? you have to be psycho if you're really getting this mad at me about bananas."

"because it's not just the bananas, dave, its how thoughtless you are! i've tried really hard to always have things you like in the house and make it comfortable for both of us since you moved in here. i mean, would it kill you to acknowledge that once in a while?"

"oh my god, are you serious? what do you expect? a fucking fanfare every time you come in with groceries? 'wow, i'm the luckiest guy in the world! lex bought me doritos! score!'"

"you are such an asshole. that's not what i'm asking for, stop twisting my words around. all i'm saying is it would be nice if you appreciate anything i do around here instead of eating all my fucking bananas."

"fine. thank you. you're the greatest girlfriend in the world and i'm so lucky to have you. and i'll tell you that every fucking day from now on. i'll write it on the white board too. happy? can i just eat the damn bananas now?"

"fine. eat your fucking bananas. i hope you get constipated."

red light green light

they say patience is a virtue. lots of people say it. i don't know who said it first and i'm too lazy to look it up. if you aren't quite as lazy as me, please find out where this originated and let me know. i'm really dying to find out.

i guess this saying suggests that if you're a good boy or girl and wait nicely and quietly good things will come and you'll be a great person and everyone will love you because you wait so nicely and quietly.

i call bullshit.

what, exactly, do you get in life by waiting? a headache, frustration, the desire to kill. oh wait, that's just me you say? well, i have always had a flair for the dramatic.

i say, patience is a vice.

i can't think of anything i've ever gotten by sitting around waiting and thinking about my virtuousness. this may also be because i'm not a very virtuous person. but still, what justice are we doing to the people we encourage to have patience?

i read in a book once that the average person spends two weeks of their life waiting for red lights to change green.

two weeks of waiting for someone to say go. i could do a million better things in two weeks than wait for a green light.

i will deliberately drive a totally round-about way toward my destination if i know i'll encounter too many traffic lights on the road more traveled. just the thought of sitting there waiting for the light to change gets me tense. and one time on a re-routed return home, i swear, i saw a goat in the middle of the road at 5:30 am in a north jersey suburb. no one believed me, but i promise you, it was there.

there are no traffic lights on that road.

have you seen a goat in the middle of the road at 5:30 am in a north jersey suburb?

or have you sat at a red light cursing the censor that didn't detect your car's presence and refused to let you keep driving?

cigarettes and promises

september 2007.

fifty minutes of eye-rolls, yawns, and that weird head-jerky thing you do when you realize you've started to fall asleep at an inopportune moment and have to snap awake before anyone notices that your eyelids are as heavy as elephants and your head is slowly drooping downward. after that, we all need a cigarette. for campus newcomers who didn't realize the closest place to stock up on marlboro lights is a few-mile walk down and back up that unshaded hill (that no one wants to make in the blistering summer's end heat), bumming cigarettes is quickly becoming a way of life. "sorry, i hate to be that person, but do you have an extra cigarette by any chance?" because i live off campus and have the luxury of my car to motor me to quick check whenever my stash dwindles, i'm the go-to gal when the nic-fit strikes.

so we all stand around sharing cigarettes and making promises to return the favor (one day). nervous glances to and fro punctuate that sometimes-awkward silence as we realize we all just spent fifty minutes in that room together, so we might as well spend a few more with one another out here in the sun. we're all new, not even a week into this new life. it finally happened. someone let us into college? our parents let us leave? (well, the latter isn't exactly the case for me, but still.) and, crap, we really have to go to this class all semester? booooring. and what was up with that lady's hair? hello, its 2007, not 1985. what's your name? where are you from? what building are you in? what's your major? do you have class now? not for a while, college writing at 4. me too. student center? yep.

seventy five minutes with another victim of 80s hairstyle nostalgia. a few more cigarettes after that. see you monday.

monday, thursday, monday, thursday. friday. saturday. sunday. monday, thursday. friday.

cigarettes and promises. dingy dorms and pbrs. insane asylums and film sets. the park and a camera. the train and a crazy. a soda and a laptop. oops.

april 2011.

every time d hits the spacebar it sticks a little and he mutters "fucking alyssa" to himself, because it was my fault. i haven't seen him in over two years, and we've talked just once or twice, but he remembers. his roommate told me this when he came back to visit. i couldn't have conjured that memory if i tried, but k reminds me and i remember.

"you guys were my first friends in this hellhole. i wish you hadn't transferred."

"i wish i hadn't left." he still smells the same. like cigarettes and promises.

baby one more time

it's challenge time once again! (side note: i'm really diggin' this.) i decided to take a stab at fiction (not one of my strong suits) this week, thanks to a fun challenge from michael:

write about someone older who is acting young, or someone young acting old. fact or fiction.

giving dialogue a whirl too, which i never do, so please let me know what you think!

you can see the response to my challenge over at runaway sentence.

---

ho-hum.

fold fold fold.

snore snore snore.

boring boring boring.

i hate this job. i hate retail. i hate folding jeans. i hate teenyboppers. i hate fashion.

so why am i still working here?

i've almost called it quits three times today. first, my bitch of a manager thought it would be a nice idea to put me on the schedule for the next three weekends in a row, when i already told her i was planning to visit my sister in jersey next weekend. then, my idiot coworker spilled my coffee all over the back room when i'd only had about two sips. which means i'm running an eight hour shift on two sips of coffee. which is not a good thing. and then, the icing on the cake, the entire stack of jeans i folded this morning was ransacked by thirteen-year-olds whose moms drop them off at the mall daily and treat us retail slaves as babysitters.

so now i'm refolding the whole thing. this is my life at 21.

i'm ready to leave, but i think this lady is about to walk in here. and since i'm the only one on the floor (since my manager thinks two people per shift is enough and robin is on break, of course) i have to "take care of her." oh, god, i wish i were saying that in the mobster-sort of way. but, alas, no, i must attend to this woman's every need, which i'm sure includes helping her find "something perfect" for her daughter's birthday present.

double take. who the hell does this lady think she is?

"hi, welcome to (a store you've apparently shopped in already... for yourself, when you have no business doing so), can i help you find anything in particular today?"

cue broadway smile. i have to think of something like how ridiculous this woman looks in her baby tee and way-too-tight-way-too-low riders to keep the smile looking "genuine." it's in the employee manual.

"no thanks, i'm just looking around. i love this store." her smile is genuine... and i think she's genuinely thinking it's okay for her to be shopping here.

i can't help but watch her mill around the store. this fifty-something is clunking around in candies and the pile of bangles on her wrinkly, overtanned, and undermoisturized arm create a freakin' harmony each time she swings it over a rack of clothes far too inappropriate for her to wear. (which is often. way too often.)

digging through a stack of once-flawlessly folded sweaters, her phone starts to ring.

is that... wait... no, seriously, is her ringtone... britney spears?

my loneliness is killing me

oh this poor woman. she genuinely doesn't know how stupid she looks. gabbing on her pink-rhinestone encrusted iphone with who i can only hope is her therapist, rifling through clothes only appropriately worn on girls 35 years her junior, she screams "i'm desperately afraid of growing old and try to recapture my youth by dressing like a teenager but i totally don't realize that all this does it point out to people how old and sad i am."

she bends over to look at something on the far wall. oh, dear lord.

yup, thong.

i'm staring at this woman because it's like i don't know how not to. i'm afraid to miss something hilarious if i turn away. she's selected a few things off the racks and making her way toward the counter; i'm walking to meet her at the register.

"did you find everything you were looking for today?" i ask, scanning her selection. jeans with rhinestones on the ass, check. too-tight baby pink v-neck sweater, check. padded push-up hot pink leopard bra. check. i choke back a chuckle, figuring a coughing fit is better than laughing in this woman's face.

"yep! honestly i probably have the layout of this place memorized, i'm in here so often." she smiles like we're pals. like i'm not wearing the very same sweater she's buying (in black though). like i'm not half her age.

and then, something happens. something so small, yet it achieves the impossible. this tiny little sound makes fifty-something embarrassed, something i had started to think impossible. she actually blushes.

my phone starts to ring.

my loneliness is killing me (and i).

(for the record, the only reason i have a britney spears ringtone is because of a really lame joke between a friend and myself that doesn't seem that funny in situations like these.)

shit. i forgot to put it on vibrate. it's right on top of my register. and it's screaming at us.

i must confess, i still believe (still believe).

"sorry!" i squeal. too bad my phone is possessed by the devil and i can't silence the ringing without taking the call.

when i'm not with you i lose my mind.

fifty-something turns the reddest red i've ever seen as she fumbles for her wallet in her bejeweled handbag.

give me a sign.

"you know what, actually, i don't think i have my credit card with me. i must have forgotten to get it back from my daughter when she came home from the mall yesterday. i'm sorry." she's flubbing her words and scrambling with her wallet and purse and makes the fastest exit i've ever seen.

hit me baby one more time.

a moment of fate

i always promised myself i wouldn't use this blog as a diary. i can't even bring myself to reread old journal entries; why would i imagine other people would want to read about my daily misadventures?

but something happened last night that has me thinking about moments of fate. i still haven't figured out if i believe in fate, to be honest. sure, in moments of heartache i've told myself "everything happens for a reason," but i'm not sure how much i really believe that. the expression is one of those cliches that we use to get us through a period of darkness, and that's especially the case for me. sometimes you have to lie to yourself a little to get through moments of pain.

but in a bizarre series of events last night, something interesting happened. and i know this wouldn't have happened if it weren't for my 22nd birthday, a few shots of red-headed sluts, a loud bar, a good mood, my brother's service in the military, my affinity for tattoos, and my propensity for talking too much.

celebrating the big 2-2, my friends and i hit the big apple last night for my birthday. while at slane, a wonderful little gem of a bar tucked into greenwich village, and feeling good with the assistance of great friends and family and a couple of birthday drinks, i made it my mission to let the entire bar know it was my birthday. seriously. i think the whole village knew actually - about once a minute a great big (and loud) "it's my birthday!" came bellowing out. i was a little downtrodden about turning 22, so i decided making a big celebration out of it would ease me in nicely. and damn, i was right.

talking to a friend, i noticed a cutie standing about two feet away and we caught each other's eyes for a moment. so, of course, i told him it was my birthday. theme for the evening. "oh yeah? well then i should buy you a birthday drink" is the cliff's notes version of the following 45 seconds.

cut to a few minutes later where we're chatting and delightfully straying from the oh-so-choreographed "chat with a stranger at a bar". he noticed one of my tattoos, as most people do, and asked why i had "hold fast" inked on my wrists. i briefly explained to him that it was a military tattoo honoring my big brother's stint in the us navy. he wondered if i'd given the military any thought myself. i reminded him of goldie hawn's performance in private benjamin - that would be me. "i'm a writer, i'm not built for that kind of manual labor."

now, usually, when i say something about being a writer, people pretend to be interested but don't investigate any further. usually i get a "oh, good for you" or "novels?" (no) and the conversation quickly takes a turn because i feel it terribly impolite to bore the shit out of kind folks who had the unfortunate luck to be dragged into a conversation about writing with me (a conversation i could have for approximately 63 hours before tiring).

to say his reaction surprised me is putting it lightly. "oh? okay, here we go. what do you write? who do you like?" he seemed a little too gung-ho, so i was waiting to be mocked. but of course i continued anyway and made quick mentions of some of my favorite writers and styles and glossed over my career goals.

it was when i got to david sedaris, my biggest writing influence, where i paused to ask "do you know him?" it seemed like a fair question, as i hate to assume another person's knowledge of writers, and i actually thought he might. well, he did.

"i've worked with him."

"huh? wait, what do you do?"

"i work for the new york times magazine." (for the sake of his privacy, i'll let that description of his job suffice.)

at this point, while he searched his pockets for a business card to prove his honesty, i excused myself. "i'll be right back." made a quick loop around my friends who were loitering a few feet away, stage-whispered "holy shit he works for the new york fucking times and worked with david fucking sedaris."

what are the chances?

so we continued to chat for a little while before exchanging contact info and returning to our separate engagements of the evening. but even still, now 24 hours later, i can't help randomly saying "new york fucking times. david sedaris. holy shit."

let's pretend for a moment i had cancelled the entire celebration, as i had considered once or twice this week. pretend we had gone to another bar before coming to slane, as was the plan up until about 30 seconds before entering slane. pretend i wasn't shouting that it was my birthday at random intervals. pretend i hadn't had a drink with him. pretend i hadn't explained my tattoo. pretend i hadn't drawn the goldie hawn comparison. pretend i didn't tell a complete stranger that i'm an aspiring writer or that my icon was david sedaris. it is entirely possible that all those things wouldn't have happened, except that they did because for some reason, without really thinking about it, i decided they would.

and i ended up meeting a guy who works for the new york fucking times. because i made a few split-second decisions.

sometimes things do happen for a reason. sometimes, they don't. and sometimes it's really hard to tell. right place, right time? coincidence? fate? who the hell knows.

but sometimes it's worth considering that in the tiniest moment, you can change your own life by simply deciding to.